Ancient datacentres could hinder IoT - IDC

'Things' will be useless without appropriate datacentre investment, analyst claims

The Internet of Things (IoT) trend may never reach its full potential if investment in the datacentre does not keep pace, according to IDC.

The analyst said that although billions of "things" will be connected to the internet in the near future, they will not work properly unless datacentres are up to scratch.

"Although the billions of end-points or connected 'things' will capture the headlines for IoT, investments in the datacentre will be critical for IoT services to reach their full potential," the analyst said, adding that between 2014 and 2019, IoT-based workloads in the datacentre will increase a massive 750 per cent.

Rick Villars, vice president of datacentre and cloud at IDC, said datacentre investment is critical for IoT's long-term success.

"Equal, or even greater, investments in the IoT platform services residing in the datacentre will be instrumental in delivering the IoT promise of anytime, anywhere, anyhow connectivity and context," he said.

"Given the number of devices connected and the amount of data generated, businesses must focus on their IoT service platform requirements at the level of the datacentre itself, not just the individual servers or storage devices."